


Song of the Stranger

by cortchuzska



Series: The Last Lion [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7706230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortchuzska/pseuds/cortchuzska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p class="quote">"<em>Seven, " he agreed, "but no one sings of the Stranger. " The Stranger's face was the face of death.</em></p><p>How Joanna's death affected her twins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cersei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion knows for a certainty Cersei hates him for killing mother; Jaime has never realized how much her hate for their little brother was jealousy of her twin; the true reason, Cersei would never admit to herself.

It was Cersei's initiative, as most of their dares.

“Deformed; the maester's very words. A monster, with talons and fangs and a little lion's tail too.” Words whispered the farthest from any Lannister's hearing, to be sure; but no one pays any mind to little girls, and if Jeyne has turned out a shy mouse once more, Melara is always eager to prove herself useful and gleaned some news. “He clawed his way out of mother belly, so she died. He shall soon, the maester sentenced.”

Such a creature shouldn't be allowed to live; a peasant's get would have been dumped off a cliff already. Father should have seen to that, but he was no longer himself after mother's death, so the babe got a Lannister name and a wet nurse instead. At the Rock everything has been out of sort since and nobody seems to know what to do. Everyone was used to taking orders from the Lady Joanna, everyone did her bidding, and who dares just now trouble Lord Tywin with the household trifles or ask his directions?

It makes no matter; either way, the babe won't live. “We'd better hurry and go see by ourselves.”

Jaime agrees and follows her. _Deformed, misshapen: wrong._ The finality bounds in their mind, as they patter lightly down winding steps. No servant tries nor dares nor cares to stop them and they plunge deeper and deeper into the Rock. Gales of ear-splitting wails lead them all along and they make to the nursery unchallenged.

They crack the door open, slid inside and look about: the wet nurse startles then wobbles a curtsey.

“Where is he? ” Cersei demands without listening to the woman's greetings. “Why does he scream so loud and is taking that long to die? The maester said...”

“Beggin' your pardon, m'lady, worry you not about them maesters. What do men know? Nothing, nothing at all; the maester cannot know how strongly the little lord takes to the teat: this boy wants to live and so he will.”

He killed mother, why would she wish for him to? Besides, he would grow up an utter fool suckling the milk of such a thickhead.

“Stop it and show us the babe, claws and tail and all.”

“Don't you listen to backbiters, old wives' tales only meant to scare children...” She mumbles. “Here you are, m'lord. A hale and hearty little boy!” The nurse turns to the crib and presents Jaime the squalling bundlle, even if he has not spoken a word. Jaime _first_ , as always, despite him being born the second.

Her twin is leery to touch it at first, as he was with the caged lions, but when the nurse goads him to, he takes it gingerly. “He is so small... Don't want to drop him.”

“Yes, just this way, m'lord, yes. Oh... Look at him, he cradles a baby better than he wields a sword!” The stupid cow coos. “Like he has never been doing anything else!”

As if holding a bunch of swaddling clothes required any worthwhile skill; not to mention, Jaime has some practice with her dolls. Cersei is the one who stages battle and duels with them; her twin is learning to fight in earnest with the master-at-arms, and when they don each other's clothes he can just as well play like a proper little lady.

For a moment, out exhaustion or out of breath, the ugly thing forgoes bawling for a blink and squints at Jaime with mismatched eyes.

“M'lord will make the best father.” The nurse prattles on.

Jaime cannot help but beam at the bundle in his arms; such adoring gazes should be hers, and hers only. He shouldn't love anything but her; she hates the little monster even more, he stole her all she held dearest: he took from her her mother's life along with her father's smiles, few as they were, and now he is stealing her twin's affection too.

He senses her anger, and with an apologetic smile, just as to yield up the last of the golden cakes he has been wolfing down, he offers. “Would you like to hold our little brother, sweet sister?”

Cersei pulls back and shakes frantically her head, breathless with pain. All she can feel for what her twin is watching so lovingly is revulsion.

It didn't hurt so bad, when she realized her male half could get what she couldn't. No use cross-dressing, and pretending to be each other, and fooling everybody, even their Lord Father, since the only difference between them was in their clothing, and barely skimmed their skin.

Their favourite colour is the same - green, as their best liked treats – honeycakes, with a pinch of saffron on top; they enjoy the same tales, they both hate beets, they rarely take ill, but always together, and recover as quickly. They have been sharing everything, since before they were born.

How come her other self loves something she loathes?

Deformed, misshapen: wrong. So she is without him.

Cersei is shocked by the sudden evidence Jaime is not her.


	2. Jaime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ _Father,” he told the corpse, “It was you who told me that tears were a mark of weakness in a man, so you cannot expect that I should cry for you.”_

The dull rumble surges and fills the Hall of Heroes, reverberates through the many caves; before its last echoes die away, swallowed by the unrelenting wail of the sea hammering the craggy bluff, 'Hear me roar!” is called once more and shakes the Rock very roots. The chanting has been going on for ages; Jaime feels dizzy and turns to his sides for help, but Lord Tywin's countenance is stony and more forbidding than ever, and Cersei is bubbling with rage, but slightly less frightening than their father.

Jaime's gaze drifts about the cavernous hall, groping for purchase, and finds none. The vault soars so high its topmost domes are drenched with darkness; only a glimmer belies the presence of gold. Below, sparse flames flickers on veins of ore, or the forgotten forms of gods and heroes, dazzling and wavering as the patterns sun rays dance on rippling waves.

On the way down, ledges and gold marbled pillars jut out from the gloom; the ever-shifting images congeal into solid statues. In the pools of light that radiate from the ground galleries man can make out the finest carved details, yet he can't tell the Crone from the Warrior but for their insignia, nor the Seven from the many Lannisters whose memorial effigies the Hall swarms with. They all are glittering gold, and their semblances keep morphing into each other's.

The range of Lannisters deployed around him, uncles, aunts, distant cousins he has only met before as the newborn heir to Casterly Rock and try as he may, he can't remember them, look all the same to him; even more similar to each other are his closer family.

Jaime wonders if a hand-shaped silver badge would turn Uncle Kevan, always at his father's heels, into the man all the Seven Kingdoms look up to for direction, or if a chain of linked golden lion heads could make jolly Uncle Gerion feared as Lord Tywin. It always works, with his twin and him, when they change clothes; they expect Cersei to be him and at times she is more Jaime than he is.

He recalls the trial of an embroidery lesson, when Jaime found out there were no such things as practice needles by nearly scratching himself. “Ladies don't scowl.” Septa Saranella chided, and he schooled a contrite smile on his face in the hope she would leave him be; instead, she helped him sort the garbled mess of his work, and even praised his goodwill, not Jeyne's and Melara's neat stitches. His lay askew as shoddy hovels shoring up each other, but they looked not that crooked by the end; or maybe he had stared at them for too long, willing them to straighten up. Cersei would not take kindly to being scolded because of his clumsiness, no more than he would like her disgracing him on the practice yard.

Seeing Septa Saranelle well disposed, Jaime asked leave to join his twin.

“Go child.” She sighed. “You would steal off anyway, wouldn't you? It's about impossible to keep the two of you apart!”

Jaime caught himself from a bow he quickly turned into a curtsey and hurried outside.

Too late: the drills were over, and the master at arms had just matched Addam Marbrand against Cersei. He was older and bigger, and one of the few boys who could give Jaime a challenge; not to mention, his best friend. His twin stood tall and proud, her stance pretty decent, as Jaime had taught her, but that was how far her swordplay went.

At the signal, Addy essayed an obvious feint, and lunged for the counterstrike they had been taught, but found no purchase in her sword, far from where he supposed it to be, and his swing made him lose his balance. On sheer instinct, Cersei dodged him with a hop; he tripped on his own feet and hit the dirt. his twin whipped around, faster than Jaime could, and hollering “Yield!” pointed her wooden blade to Marbrand's throat, as she had seen him doing so many times.

Jaime wildly cheered: Cersei winked at him and stuck out her tongue That would not do: “A true knight lets his sword do all of the talking.” , he had been rebuffed far too often.

Luckily the commotion turned their uncles from their sparring and Gerion Lannister laughed her back.

“Well fought, nephew. “ Tygett added.

“As slick as effective.” Nodded the master at arms. “Addam, you have strength: control it and see it's not used against you.”

Marbrand, always good-humoured, shook off the dirt from his padding and his red curls asking Cersei “Jaime, how did you manage that? Last thing I remember is I attacked, you barely moved, and I was on the ground!”

“Here, Ser!” Uncle Gerion raised his sword into a mock challenge; at Cersei's perfect salute, he dropped his blade yelling “I yield!” and fell down with a caper.

Addy chuckled, and Jaime couldn't help a giggle: even ladies were allowed to, he surmised, since Melara and Jeyne were tittering half the time.

“It won't be long before the master will entrust you with a tourney sword, I believe.” Uncle Tygett approached Cersei and through the padding felt her tiny arms. “You're already growing the muscles for it.”

Gerion tried to win back favour with the promise of a bigger prize. “The day you earn spurs, Brightroar is yours, had I to sift the Rock to find where the one Lannister more witless than Tygett mislaid it.”

“You'd have better look sailing for Old Valyria, brother.” Tygett snickered: they were always bickering and struggling for the last word. “The day Cersei does: that is, never.”

Both their uncles laughed; and now, they were standing still, and Gerion's dimpled smile is replaced by a bitter crease.

Remembrance stirs up guilt, and Jaime gasps for fresh air; his longing for open space and sun and laughter deepens to a throbbing pang. The cloying smell of wax tapers fills his nostrils; here the Stranger holds sway, and is no place for jests.

The Stranger's countenance is unreadable as his father's, his features have something leonine to them; his face is not human nor animal, for he comes for all, men and animals alike; not male nor female, for death picks no culls and bloodies battlefields as birthing beds. He has no face and all; but not his mother's.

The lifeless statues of the Seven wrought in gold look more Lannister, more like family than what's on the bier. Mayhap who melted them took some of his ancestors of yore to model, the old Kings of the Rock and their kin; nor Jaime nor Cersei could figure the Father above any different from their Lord Father. The thing looks nothing alike Lady Joanna: the jutting nose is not hers, nor the hollowed cheeks, and where are her eyes? The more Jaime strives to make out his mother's features, to imprint her likeness in his mind, the more they blur off.

His twin elbows sharply his ribcage. “Don't be stupid.” Cersei hisses. “Can't you remember what father just said?”

Down in the Hall of Heroes, deep into the Rock very bowels, the air is oppressive; too many torches, too many people: the whole of the Lannisters, all of his father's bannermen, envoys of the Red Keep and wealthy merchants from Lannisport, most of Casterly Rock household, all in their best. Candlelight glints off the noblemen's chains of office and weaponry, the ladies' cloth-of-gold, and most people's hair, polished to a metallic shine: Lann he Clever stole from the Sun and was generous in giving, even to the smallfolk.

Before them all, he is to act as expected of Jaime Lannister, son of Tywin, heir to Casterly Rock.

“It's only smoke.” Jaime smirks. “One would believe himself in the Smith's forge rather than by the Stranger!”

Lord Tywin's jaw clenches, but just ever so slightly.

_Boys don't cry._

 


End file.
